How Donald Trump Treated Megyn Kelly Before Their Clash at the Debate

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has been the target of Donald Trump's misogyny since the 2016 election cycle began, when Kelly, while moderating the first GOP debate, dared to challenge Trump's history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals." Trump lashed out on Kelly, saying she must have had "blood coming out of her wherever." In January, he withdrew from a debate that Kelly was moderating. (To Fox News's credit, the network refused to replace Kelly as moderator when Trump initially threatened to withdraw.) On Wednesday night, during the seventh annual Women in the World Summit in New York City, Kelly spoke to Katie Couric about "being a powerful feminine voice in American media." This is an excerpt of that conversation focusing on Kelly's reaction to being the subject of Trump's attacks, edited for length and clarity.

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Katie Couric: When you asked that question [in the first GOP debate], which I thought was completely legitimate and appropriate, it was your first [question] out of the gate. Did you try to start the debate with a little fireworks? What was your thought process? [Editor's note: The question was, "You've called women you don't like 'fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals' ... Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women's looks … Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge against Hillary Clinton, who is likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?"]Megyn Kelly: No, that wasn't what I was thinking. If you go back and look at that opening round that we did, it was the very first debate of the entire season … That first round was on electability. Are you electable? If you get this nomination, could you beat the presumptive Democratic nominee, which we assumed was going to be Hillary Clinton at that point? And all of them got hit — they were really tough questions for each one of them … But Trump was the only one who complained.

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Did he ever. Since that time, he has called you "overrated," "sick," "unwatchable." He said you have a second-rate show and you're a third-rate talent, and I think that just opened the floodgates for a whole array of vitriol from his supporters. Twitter reactions were grotesque. How have you dealt with that onslaught of nastiness?I try to stay off Twitter. I have to go on the newsfeed, so I go on the newsfeed, but I don't go on the mentions where you see what people are saying about you. And whenever I do, I regret doing it. ... I try to stay in my happy, positive world, which is my husband, Doug, and my three children, who are 2, 4 and 6. And usually that's possible; at times when it reaches a fever pitch, it spills over even into that world … which is what I really don't like. I don't like putting my kids to bed and having to think about that vitriol. But I also understand to some extent it's part of the job. And politics is a tough business, and news has gotten to be a very tough business, and I understand that the people who love Donald Trump — not all of them, but many of them — feel that he was attacked, and therefore they feel justified in attacking me.

Megyn Kelly and Katie Couric at the 2016 Women in the World summit.

Getty

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What were your interactions like with Donald Trump prior to this debate? Did you have any interactions with him at all?I did. I knew him a little, the way you know anybody you see in the news or comes on your show occasionally. I think when I had my afternoon show, he came on one time, and when I launched The Kelly File, which was in September of 2013, he came on one time. I think he was on the show twice before he ran for president, so I knew him a little bit. And when we got closer to the election, or to him announcing that he was going to run, he started reaching out more. He'd call me after a segment that he enjoyed and say how great it was, or he would send me clips about myself, like news clippings, that he would sign "Donald Trump." Which was nice! I mean, I appreciated that he was reaching out.

There were some other gestures he made which, in retrospect, I understand them better. I think he was trying to curry favor, because he understood that he was going to be running for president at the time. And I didn't know that he was doing that with many journalists. Now I've talked to many journalists, and he was doing that with many of us. And I knew that I was never going to love him and I was never going to hate him. And it was no comment on Donald Trump, it's just that you have to keep these relationships at arm's length, especially when they're going to run for president. And there was nothing to be gained by developing some sort of friendship with him or from alienating him. But my own belief is that when he heard that question from me, he felt betrayed. You know, as he said, "I've been very nice to you."

But, you know, I was like, I didn't ask him to call me or send me those things. It was a nice gesture, but it's not going to stop me from asking tough questions.

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Fox issued a press release commenting on his extreme, sick obsession with you. But before that, did you feel that they were being supportive enough, publicly, and do you wish your colleagues and the executives at Fox had spoken out more on your behalf? He was on some of their other shows, and they never really challenged him about some of the things he was saying about you.I think Fox has done a good job supporting me, and I feel for my boss, Roger Ailes, because think of the position he's been put in. This is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to go after a news anchor in this way. So he has fought back, and tried to issue statements and contact him directly, and when Trump said he was going to boycott the debate that he had agreed to show up [at], [after] we spent millions of dollars to get the facility, and the RNC had agreed, and the American people understood it was going to be happening, and the other candidates were there, and he said, "I'm not showing up unless you pull her." And I think a lot of network bosses would have said, "You're gone." I do. I think that some people are so ratings-driven, they would have found some reason to go to the moderator and say, "What if you sit this one out?" And I was grateful that my boss said, "Then don't come. You don't get to tell us who the moderators of our debate are going to be." Because think about it: He had complained in some other instances about who was going to be at some other debates, and those partners in those debates were pulled. So there is evidence that that kind of pressure can have an effect.

[There is] this whole trend toward not asking challenging questions because if you ask super-challenging questions, the candidate gets mad, [and] he or she won't be interviewed by you anymore. So it's all about access. Do you feel people's hands were tied during the beginning of this election cycle because they did not want to kill the goose that was laying the golden egg?I do. And I think it's so ironic because if everyone had stood up from the beginning and asked very tough questions — which is what we get paid to do — there wouldn't have been this issue. Because we all would have been shoulder-to-shoulder asking tough questions, so he couldn't cut off access.

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I wonder sometimes whether the question I asked him at the debate, and the backlash against me, cowed other journalists, because they don't want it to happen to them.

I wonder about that though. He has been such a Teflon candidate; he has said many outrageous things that would disqualify a lot of other candidates. But I think the groundswell of support for him is so strong for whatever interesting reason that some of his answers throughout the course of this campaign really haven't hurt him.I think that's true. But that's a different issue: What his answers are is for the voters to evaluate and make up their minds about. What the questions are is up to us.

I agree, but I'm saying I don't know if it would have made a big difference.I don't look at it that way. I don't care whether it makes a difference or not; that's for the voters. Our job is to just press. We're supposed to press. And I wonder sometimes whether the question I asked him at the debate, and the backlash against me, cowed other journalists, because they don't want it to happen to them. Maybe they don't have a boss that they think will stand behind them, or maybe they just want access and they want the [ratings] numbers. But what if they had gone a different route? What would have happened if everybody had gotten tough — really tough, equally — on all of [the candidates], including him? Then you can't, as a presidential candidate, shut down everybody. You can't shut down Fox and CNN and CBS and ABC and NBC. There's strength in numbers on our side too. And this was a moment, this was an opportunity for solidarity among the press that I think we missed.

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